Gamelan Sekar Jaya

BIOGRAPHY

Gamelan Sekar Jaya is a sixty-member company of musicians and dancers, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, specializing in the performing arts of Bali, Indonesia. Founded in 1979, Sekar Jaya is now recognized internationally as “the finest Balinese gamelan ensemble outside of Indonesia.” (Indonesia’s Tempo Magazine) The group has sponsored the creation of more than eighty new music and dance works by Balinese and American artists in major projects supported by the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, the MAP Fund, the National Dance Project, and many other foundations and individuals. Over the last three decades, GSJ has created new works in exciting collaborations that stretch the boundaries of culture, genre, and ethnicity; and blur the distinctions between traditional and modern. Gamelan Sekar Jaya has performed throughout California, the US, and Bali—in venues ranging from LA’s Hollywood Bowl, to New York’s Symphony Space, to remote village squares in Bali.

MUSIC

Jagat Anyar includes original works by Balinese and American composers for GSJ's Balinese gamelan angklung and gong kebyar ensembles. This album was first released on cassette in 1994 and has been reissued by popular demand on CD and MP3.

Bayangan Jiwa “the imagination of the spirit” is a work for the seven-toned Balinese gamelan semarandana & gender wayang, investigating how child-like playfulness, physical training & divine inspiration come together in the search for the eternal self.

Banjar Baru—instrumental work for gamelan angklung
Guest Music Director I Made Arnawa created this instrumental work when Sekar Jaya was searching for a new banjar (community center). Two years later, Sekar Jaya moved to their new home in Berkeley, CA.

SERASI (“Harmony”) presents traditional and new material for the Balinese Gamelan, with a focus on themes that are central to Balinese belief: interdependence, balance, and harmony between humans, nature, and the spiritual world.

Gamelan Sekar Jaya
Jegog: Live at the Bali Arts Festival
In 2010, Gamelan Sekar Jaya’s bamboo jegog group performed at the illustrious Pesta Kesenian Bali (PKB), or "Bali Arts Festival", in Indonesia. We offer you the live recording from that performance.

Kali Yuga: The Age of Chaos features a thirty-musician bronze gamelan orchestra, poetry, song, and ambient sound, and is a response to twenty-first century world conflicts, and inspired by the ancient texts of the Mahabharata.